Deeplinks Blog posts about Privacy

It's been a little over a week since Facebook debuted a massive revamp of its privacy settings. EFF immediately followed that release with a detailed critique, concluding that the changes were "clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before [and] will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data."

As 2009 draws to a close, we're inching ever deeper into the corner that Congress painted us into by passing Real ID under the table in 2005. (Recall that Real ID is the failed, Bush-era attempt to turn state drivers licenses into national ID cards by forcing states to collect and store licensee data in databases, and refusing to accept non-compliant IDs for federal purposes, like boarding a plane or entering a federal building.)

Yesterday, the web was buzzing with commentary about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's dangerous, dismissive response to concerns about search engine users' privacy. When asked during an interview for CNBC's recent "Inside the Mind of Google" special about whether users should be sharing information with Google as if it were a "trusted friend," Schmidt responded, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Five months after it first announced coming privacy changes this past summer, Facebook is finally rollingout a new set of revamped privacy settings for its 350 million users. The social networking site has rightly been criticized for its confusing privacy settings, most notably in a must-read report by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner issued in July and most recently by a Norwegian consumer protection agency. We're glad to see Facebook is attempting to respond to those privacy criticisms with these changes, which are going live this evening.

EFF filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit's en banc review of Mohamed v. Jeppesen, a case brought by the ACLU challenging the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected the government's argument that the case had to be dismissed at the outset due to the state secrets privilege. The panel decision is now being considered by a larger, en banc panel of the Court.